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‘Behind the Mist’ Review: A Spiritual Doc That Finds Parallels Between Filmmaking and Mountaineering
Ecuador's Oscar entry 'Behind the Mist' is a search for meaning in the Himalayas.
This search ends up taking philosophical form, as the “Europa Report” director trades in a moon of Jupiter for the peaks of Nepal, as seen through a DIY digital camera following discussions about everything from Camus to family issues with Vallejo. This process, which happens multiple times throughout the film, also embodies the cycles of birth and rebirth in the aforementioned faiths — not unlike Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez’s documentary “Manakamana,” in which the camera moves through light and dark spaces along a cable car to a Nepalese temple — as though Cordero were nearing liberation through enlightenment, or nirvana, but not quite achieving it. The snow is falling, swiftly and forcefully, and the reduced motion blur of Cordero’s camera in these moments causes not just a jittery effect, but results in the snowfall illuminating Vallejo and the rock in particular, enveloping them in a living haze unseen elsewhere in the frame, as though this unassuming person and object were ethereally bound, across time and space.
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